Sex Education

Once upon a time, a spotty teenage boy with a flat face confessed to having a massive crush on the school tart. They started going out. This was big gossip. They were known as ‘Bucket and Spade’ …do you get it? She was a tart and he had a flat face. I still laugh to this day. Surely for ‘Bucket and Spade’ to have a happy, healthy relationship then they had to be equipped with all the facts on the ‘birds and the bees’. Luckily, this loved up pair didn’t have to wait long to be educated…today was ‘sex education day’. We were all so excited as we looked at the blackboard and saw the words ‘LETS TALK ABOUT SEX’.

Our form tutor who we all said was ‘kinda fit for an old bloke’ looked like he was on the brink of suicide. He cleared his throat “Right kids” he croaked. “Shout out slang words for your genitals and I’ll write them on the board.” Brave, brave, stupid man. He began visibly sweating as he wrote the word ‘minge’ on the board. I also looked like a complete twat (coincidently, another word that was shouted out) when I said “In my family we call it a cookie”. I got the fright of my life when I first saw the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. I still remember the image clearly…he was on a bright pink kids swimming costume.

‘I’m the Cookie Monster, I eat cookies!’ I ran out of the shop screaming. This genuinely still keeps me up at night.

When we were little we used to have a satellite dish for Italian television. One day we were watching a cartoon when an image appeared on the screen of lots of naked people in a jacuzzi. They were having a ‘grown up party because they are in love’ as my mum described it to me. My little sister, brother and I ran upstairs to my mum shouting “Mummy, Mummy there’s a man on the telly eating a ladies cookie!” My mum later explained what had happened to my errant father. Instead of acknowledging the problem with the satellite dish and what his poor little kids had seen he was just very irritated that he couldn’t get it on his Italian satellite dish.

In his thick Italian accent he kept saying “Which channel? I missed this, what time and day?”

I’m sure he’s a massive fan of high speed internet, purely for this very reason. No longer will he need to wait weeks between episodes of ‘Jacuzzi Orgy’. He’ll be able to binge on every single episode whenever he likes…including a soul destroying Christmas special. All online.

My sex education growing up didn’t just come from middle aged Geography teachers and accidental Italian porn. There was a boy at school who had experienced everything. We all thought he was amazingly grown up and cool because he had a dragon tattoo and a moustache. Looking back the tattoo was awful and the moustache needed work. One day he gathered a few of us in the playground to pass on some vital information….this is verbatim by the way…

”Last night I was fingering this bird.”

“Oh my god, who?!” a little short lad excitedly asked.

“No questions!” said moustache boy.

He carried on, all of us looking on in awe.

“All of a sudden I started rubbing this little thing on the outside and she went wild for it.”

He had discovered the clitoris, and in that moment had become a legend in our town. If only he had passed this horribly worded information on to more men, I’m sure they would find women nagged them less.

Despite a plethora of educational sources in my past, ‘Grown Up’ Ilaria is still as confused about sex as ‘Little’ Ilaria ever was. This was never more evident than the time I was working as a Creative Practitioner in a school and was unexpectedly asked to cover the PSHE class. The class with the ever changing name. When I was at school we called it ‘Citizenship Class” then it changed to PACE (no one knew what the hell that stood for). The class that teaches you to write a CV, wash your face and basically to not be an arsehole.

This week was supposed to be sex education week (yes, it really can all be covered in a week, apparently). My anxiety levels soared. WHY ME? I am not equipped to deal with this. My main advice would be “Listen kids, don’t do it till you’re 35” followed by “It’s massively overrated and never, I repeat never worth the expensive knickers and certainly not worth the wax.”

Instead, I walked into the class of virgins and introduced myself as Ilaria (not Miss or Mrs, I was desperately trying to make them think I was cool). I told them very earnestly that they could ask absolutely anything and that no one would laugh. This was a lie. I got them all to write down their burning questions onto little scraps of paper and pop them into a hat. This was so they felt able to ask questions they’d be too shy to otherwise ask.

This would’ve worked beautifully if the little sods didn’t put their hands up and say “That’s mine!” after I’d read them out.

This question needed answering with care. There are a few factors to consider but the main point is – it isn’t pick ’n’ mix.

I couldn’t bear to read out a third question, instead I just played an educational video from my childhood. He might be terrifying but he sure knows how to write and perform a catchy tune. Teenage pregnancy is high in this country and in all honesty, I blame this guy. Everybody, meet ‘Johnny Condom’.